As a 59-yo 17-yr long-term male AIDS patient survivor who is currently taking Tipranavir-Norvir, Fuzeon, and Truvada and recently reached an undetectable viral load with under 200 Tcells. Is there no decent adequate critical medical-scientific information on the disabling suffocating ischemic depressive cardiovascular breathing and circulatory
side-effects occurring in patients like me from taking Norvir??? - or am I the only patient suffering these difficult physically depressive constrictive side-effects everytime I take the Norvir everyday (and Norvir-related drugs in the past)??? The physical depressive cardiovascular symptoms ALWAYS precede any psychological agitation dysfunction symptoms and my doctor simply dismisses, refutes and denies the seriousness of my symptoms which I now consider "extremely life-and-death risking for heart-attack or
stroke!!!" I have no doubt the symptoms are caused solely from Norvir and similar-type drugs like Agenerase or Kaletra because I experimented by separating and spacing out my medications apart from each other, and my unbearable symptoms only started reoccurring again within 20-40 minutes after taking Norvir (or Kaletra or Agenerase 2 years
previously) and not after anything else!!! Thankyou for your assistance!!!

Response from Dr. Henry

There seem to be a small percentage of patients who cannot tolerate ritonavir for a variety of reasons. In those types of cases it is often hard to pin down if there is some type of genetic pre-disposition to a particular organ-related problem (i.e. liver for some or cardiac for others). I assume you have had an EKG and cardiac work-up to see if anything obvious is occuring (such as an arrhythmia). KH

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